Monday, November 10, 2014

Steven Goddard is insisting that there is a "greenhouse effect" due to IR absorption by "greenhouse gases"; he claims they impede heat energy flow from the Earth's surface upward, like a dam across a river impedes the river's flow. My response:From the Earth's surface to the tropopause, the energy flow is governed solely by the lapse rate in temperature, which is due solely to the gravitational acceleration g and the effective specific heat of the atmosphere--completely independent of just how the atmosphere is warmed, as for example by absorption and emission of IR radiation by IR-active ("greenhouse") gases in the atmosphere. "Greenhouse gases" don't impede the energy flow upward, as--again--my Venus/Earth temperatures comparison proved (simply: it precisely--precisely--confirmed the Standard Atmosphere, which is based upon the temperature lapse rate as the governing physical condition of the atmosphere--and this, despite local and transient, as well as latitudinal, variations of the real troposphere from its precise definition in the Standard Atmosphere). Your argument is based upon a false premise, and is therefore irrelevant, immaterial, and incompetent.